California pastor to run for SBC president

SAN FRANCISCO — Bill Wagner, a California college president and pastor, has said he will run for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) presidency in 2008.’

Wagner was a longtime employee of the SBC’s International Mission Board (IMB) and wrote “How Islam Plans to Change the World” in 2004. He started work as a missionary in Europe in 1965 and became an IMB regional consultant for evangelism and church growth in 1982. He also served as first vice president of the SBC in 2003. Wagner is president of Olivet University International in San Francisco and pastor of Snyder Lane Baptist Church, Rohnert Park, Calif. He was formerly a professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif.
Commenting on his candidacy, Wagner told Baptist Press he found it surprising that the SBC has “never had an International Mission Board missionary as their president, never had someone from a pioneer context (west of Texas or north of Maryland) as its president, never had a pastor of a small church as its president, and never had a trained missional strategist at its helm.”